Regarding the CC forum Storytelling thread

Lore Story Forum
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So to start off, this is going to be offering some input about this thread.

Read it first, because it is worth the read. I know there’s a GD thread already, but given this is about the Story and the Lore, I felt obligated to steal someone else’s idea and bring this to the Story Forum where we discuss the Lore.

So… Guess since I’m’a starting this thread, I gotta go first.

First off, Halite, if you’re reading this? You earned a gold star and bestie status (that last one is very covetted and you feel honored right now even if you don’t know it). You were right on the money with the problems regarding Shadowlands, BfA and storytelling in WoW in general. Especially that the story concepts themselves are not necessarily bad, more how they are implemented.

For me the big red flag in Shadowlands is the covenant campaigns themselves, but in a way you didn’t bring up; there are four of them. Four seperate stories that when they were new, required a whole lot of Renown grinding and covenant swapping to get in total if you wanted to see how they all played out. Alts were an option of course, but others have addressed the issue with alts in SL and going through the time and effort of leveling four seperate characters just to get access to the story is a big ask, about as big of an ask as just swapping covenants and grinding that renown.

And some of those covenant campaigns are rather important to the rest of the Shadowlands narrative! We learn Uther is corrupted in the quest campaign, but if you didn’t pick Kyrian for your covenant or at least grind out that covenant to later switch to your chosen one (or alts or what have you), then you go from Uther being corrupted and bad to suddenly walking past Anduin in chains with no explanation. If you never played a night fae, you probably walked into the first chapters of Korthia asking “woah, what’s going on with Tyrande?! Last I saw her she jumped into the Maw and that was it. What do you mean the Night Warrior thing is killing her, when did that happen? And who are these people around us helping to depower her?! What is even going on here?!?”

And nothing tells you where those missing story bits took place. If I played a Venthyr, I don’t have any inkling where Tyrande fits in. I might extrapolate that Uther, given he was in chains in Bastion, showed up in the Kyrian story but I’m just left to assume that.

And the now-defunct Torghast story fits in here too. I got a weekly quest to go do Torghast stuff, but even when I’m done with those weeklies, there’s things stuffed into Torghast and unlocking more memories that further the story. And you only know that if you just so happen to unlock those memories or do that much Torghast stuff. It just… Happens suddenly, with no inkling that if you want the full Shadowlands story, you need to run Torghast, do some dungeons for the memories, same for raids, so on and so forth.

… I got more, but I want to have this up for others to put their input into. So back in a bit!!

…

Ok, back. Hi!! I cannot reply to my own post until someone else does, so here’s an edit or five!!

Anyway, back at it.

Another problem I find in the story is the odd shifting of tones and threats. This is more of a BfA thing than a Shadowlands one, but it remains relevant in my opinion.

When we’re dropped into Zandalar and Kul Tiras, it’s after a pretty big start to the Fourth War. But… Suddenly that isn’t very relevant anymore. Now it’s all about helping trolls and humans settle their islands’ issues. The Alliance get a reminder that the Horde’s at war with them in Stormsong Valley, but that’s hardly a primary plot to the zone. The Horde doesn’t even get that much.

But then, suddenly, once the affairs are in order, we’re back at it. Fighting and kicking and stabbing each other.

And then we’re not, because a G’huun is there. Horde gets some hints at a G’huun being a thing, Alliance get hints at something-something-maybe old gods, but it’s all still completely divorced from the main narrative.

But then we’re back at it, fighting each other, complete with zone assaults and a raid! The Alliance wins the raid, we’re building up to a something, the war’s starting to heat up, and…

You fall into a hole in the ocean. Stop, naga time! Some cybergnomes too.

And then suddenly, we’re at the climax of a war that started and stopped three or four times from a player perspective.

Because of this, BfA’s war felt like a side quest in an old god expansion, and the old god stuff felt like a side quest in a faction war expansion. Everything just suddenly shifts from one plot to the other, and neither feels coherent or important.

A and B plots can be done right, and Blizzard has even done them right before. Their slow burn side plot complementing their primary story. MoP and the rise of the Zandalari and Mogu paired with a faction war, Wrath with Yog-Saron and his shenanigans paired with the Lich King, Legion with the Void paired with the Burning Legion.

BfA’s problem wasn’t that it had an A plot and a B plot they switched between; it’s that both wanted to be the A plot and struggled against each other so hard, they each came out looking like a C plot. Neither one felt like they were treated as important enough to warrant a full expansion dedicated to them, when by all rights either one could and should have carried an expansion.

…

Another issue, and tied close to the first thing I brought up, is where the story gets told all too often; books and comics.

I’ve said multiple times that books and comics should not be where major story beats happen. The game needs to tell me the story of the game itself. Transmedia should exist for people like us, the lore nerds who want more. It should not be required to understand the game itself.

I’m not going to give the obvious Sylvanas example. Instead I’m going to talk about War Crimes and WoD.

Imagine you’ve been playing Mists of Pandaria. You did all the things to do on Timeless Isle, got the doohicky quest, did SoO to do the doohicky quest, beat up Garrosh, and are anxiously awaiting the next expansion content in the knowledge that Garrosh is rotting away in some Pandaria jail.

… Why the hecking heck is he on some alt-universe Draenor? How the heck did he get there?! What even happened here??

Oh, wait, you didn’t read War Crimes? Because all of that only exists in the novel War Crimes.

Played through WoD, got to Nagrand, watched Thrall kill Garrosh, all expecting to finally understand how this whole mess came to be?

Sorry, none of that sounds like you read War Crimes tho. You really should, everything makes sense if you just read this book.

This… Is frankly extremely disjointing. The game’s story should make some degree of sense within the game itself. We’re seeing it now in Shadowlands, with the required reading of the Sylvanas novel to make sense of the last two expansions, but it’s present across the board. Story beats within the game only make sense if you’ve read a book, read a comic or listened to an audio book. Without those, you are left in the dark about why Alleria is skeptical of going to see Xe’ra (just one of many expamples).

But speaking of Argus…

…

WoW has another storytelling problem, but one that is harder to solve. It’s coming up on its eighteenth birthday, it’s ninth expansion, and a boatload of content spread throughout. While many people quit the game, there are still people coming in, hoping to experience the world of Azeroth for themselves, to feel how it might have felt to fight such iconic villains as the Lich King, Illidan, some orc named Garry, Deathwing, Grom Hellscream a big demon summoned by Gul’dan, Sargeras Argus(?!?), N’zoth and so on.

But they won’t experience those fights. Not in a meaningful way. They might not even know those fights exist. Because content patches and raids exist.

To highlight what I’m getting at, I think I should start with an example. Let’s say that you’re a new player. You got your first character to level 60 as a Horde something. You did Exile’s Reach and loved it. You did BfA and wondered what even the heck is going on here. You ran through Shadowlands and still feel lost because…

Actually, wait. Rewind.

You did BfA. You started being sieged at Lordaeron. Why? No clue at all, looks like the Alliance just came to pick a fight. Something about a Teldrassil was mentioned, but you don’t recall anyone by that name being with you on Exile’s Reach. But it’s fine, because Sylvanas looks cool, Anduin looks cool (hey, you’re new) and all the action keeps happening. Sylvanas blows up the city, and that’s fine because screw these guys picking a fight with you for no reason and attacking this Underwear City place. Now you’re in Ogre Mart, the cute goth elf wants you to break into a Stormy Wing to rescue (or maybe it was steal?) a Sore Fang. He says no because honor, Zul tries to burn the city down (it’s only fair; you lost Underwear City, the Alliance losing Stormy Wing seems a fair enough trade-off), the evil Jaina keeps chasing you, you get on the boat and now you’re Zuldazaring.

A big as all hell sword is killing Azeroth, so you have to help some trolls. And you do! Maybe along the way you use a boat to visit some place called Cool Trash where the evil warmongers of the Alliance live now that Stormy Wind is burned to the ground, but they’re already a distant memory because trolls are so much cooler (and they are).

But you did such a good job of helping the trolls that now at level 50, you get sent off to the Shadowlands. Something must have happened to Sylvanas because she’s suddenly evil now, and you’re forced to work with the evil witch Jaina, warmongering provoker Anduin, some periphery character named Baine who you think might have been in a cinematic, and whatever Thrall is. And wasn’t there something about older gods? Can’t wait for them to make their first appearance.

… Except we know none of that is right (except trolls being cool). The entire story presented to this new player is absolutely wrong.

Because they didn’t play a now-removed BfA pre-patch event and because they never played the post-Zandalar war campaign. And they certainly never learned who any of these characters are, because they are never introduced to you. Hell, this new player might not even know a whole war broke out, because it all began and ended with the BfA intro questlines before getting to Zandalar.

WoW’s story only barely exists in the leveling campaign. The quest zones give you the overview of what started the big fight, but that big fight itself exists otherwise in patch content and in raids that new players are not encouraged to do.

…

So you make that alt. The BfA story made no sense to you, so you decide to take this alt through the expansion before it. Legion should give you all the missing details about this Teldrassil person the Horde allegedly burned to death. You talk to Chromie after another trip through Exile’s Reach (and you double checked, there was no Teldrassil guy or girl there at all!!), select Legion, and go.

On the Broken Shore, you learned Variant and Sylvanas are friends (or friendly). The noble Horde and the warmongering Alliance team up to fight alien space demons with their alien space ships (which is as cool as it sounds, maybe even cooler). You get Alynsa’s favorite introduction scenario of all expansions, fighting up a beach and a hill, through an army of demons. You’re about to face Guldan Ramsey (others have made this joke, and done it better) when it all goes wrong. Some troll named Vol’jin died but he couldn’t have been too important. Variant also died, and it did look like he was on fire, so maybe his last name is Teldrassil?

You do some things in Ogre Mart, you swear to help Sylvanas avenge that random nobody troll (really? This is the woman who goes evil later on in Shadowlands?!? She seems so nice and clearly loves the Horde) and off to Dalaran you go!! They send you to a class hall who sends you to get an artifact. You get the thing, and then two more as well because you can. Now you have a map to click on. Four zones will explain everything about this Burning Legion, and maybe you’ll find out why the Alliance likes this Variant Teldrassil so much.

And you end it with even more questions. Is the Legion still attacking Azeroth? There was some mention about an Emerald Nightmare, what was that about? Why was there a whole zone in the middle of your map that you couldn’t ever click on? Will the mystery of the big sword you saw in BfA ever get resolved, and why is Variant Teldrassil so important?

All of this is a very long-winded way to say that so much story is locked behind content a new player would never know about and is never pushed towards that parsing through the lore is a daunting task.

But here I have a suggestion; new questlines, two per expansion and reusing assets. One to introduce you to all the major players, and one to finish it off. A hypothetical BfA intro quest would play through a very abbreviated version of the War of Thorns, culminating in Teldrassil and moving on to the pre-existing quests. A hypothetical BfA finale would sum up the important bits of the war campaign and most importantly, is automatically added to your quest long, and scaled to your level!! Give players a means to learn the basic story of an expansion, along with the outcome, so they don’t have to scavenge third party websites.

Protip: This solution could also be applied to book events you want players to know.

That’s what I’ve got for now. Hopefully someone else posts soon, in case other thoughts hit me.

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It’s almost 4AM and I can’t articulate my feelings on the fact that they made the Three Warchiefs problem worse so I can’t offer anything helpful. I just wanted to post so you could post again if you needed to.

I’ll make an actual post at normal people hours.

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Long story short, they went too far on the whole comsic thing, focus on the wrong aspects of a criminally few characters, and hacked everything together instead of explaining things properly or convincing the player to care. Also thinking Teldrassil was going to be a one and done thing to kick off a new expansion screams willful ignorance.

I’ll probably write a longer post when I get time.

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I am not a fan of the whole CC thing, so I avoid the section. But I decided to give it a look, since you said this. Also, because part of my philosophy with the CC is : “if anything posted there is of any consequence, it will bleed into GD and the Story Forum, where more than just those hand picked by Blizzard can comment.” I guess this counts as bleed over, so I gave it a read before I commented.

It is long. They spent time on it. It is their opinion. I agree with some and disagree with some.

If Blizzard ignores every other section and only reads their hand chosen CC section, at least they can see some criticism in a fair and polite manner. For what ever that is worth. Maybe they don’t want negativity in the dojo, but the doormat called the Community Council can remind them, if they deign to even look down on it.

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You made the whole narrative sound too good.

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I really hope that they read Halite’s thread closely and take some lessons from it.

I could comment on each aspect of it and even add to it (Alynsa already did a great job doing that).

Realistically I know there were probably a combination of real life aspects (disputes, lawsuits, and COVID) that hindered the delivered content, but some of the structural aspects are pretty glaring and it’s extended over two expansions which is troubling.

And I’m willing to give folks the benefit of the doubt. Since 9.1.5, a lot of gameplay concerns have been addressed in an amazingly responsive fashion. They’re not fully addressed, but frankly, I’m optimistic about the future with respect to it.

Unfortunately, the lackluster part was the storytelling. It’s been a struggle.

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I’m sitting in a meeting that I’m not even needed in that has now stretched 45 minutes longer than it was supposed to last, so I figured I would ignore my previous post and actually give feedback to Halite (and you as well Alynsa, though as I said it’s pretty much just piling on which might be a waste of time, but it’s vaguely cathartic).

I think it’s possible this was intended to be a story told in 3 part (9.0-9.2). I absolutely do believe that. I just believe that each part was intended to be much larger. The threads that are just abruptly closed, glossed over entirely, or just ignored are too numerous to ignore.

I don’t mind weekly story content (as Halite mentioned) but when the weekly content is so small, it’s just silly. Here’s an hour of story, now go back to doing chores for a week. I think some of this is part of the fact that they had to create 4x as many storylines by segregating them by covenants (a massive amount of players told them the covenant structure was awful and this is part of it).

I actually don’t mind the Sylvanas monologue during the cinematic upon rescuing Anduin. Reasonable minds will disagree.

With that in mind though, in my opinion, the weird story choices start from the very beginning. Forget retconning everything to “Jailer all along,” the entirety of the Jailer narrative being conspicuously absent is just awkward.

He goes after the sigils to open the door to ZM. Except even after we know he’s doing bad things, no one tells us that he did this before? No one tells us exactly what he did to begin with let alone his motivations. We’re not even sure he told other folks his motivations. As a general point, he has less personality than a sheet of blank paper.

Sylvanas, an iconic WoW character, is perpetually “there” but she’s basically an empty character that comes across with as much depth as the Jailer. Folks here know about Edge of Night, but I don’t even think anything about that is in-game, let alone anything that follows. At the end of the expansion, we learn “everything” about a decade worth of lore that was stuffed in to create this story - and would have been valuable to know during the story.

The fact that the afterlife is “unfair” is actually touched on within the story - except it’s basically only touched upon. There’s a brief commentary and then we’re moving onward. Except that “unfairness” is a fundamental concept that seems like it’s pretty important to the story itself. Forgetting lava eel vore for a moment (though it’s pretty unforgettable), we know Draka and Durotan are separated, but it’s just barely discussed. The Forsworn conflict appears intriguing at first, then it becomes, “Well they’re actually Mawsworn and evil” and then becomes, “Well, some of them have valid concerns, so let’s merge.” And the entirety of the afterlife that we’re shown is basically souls serving “The Purpose” (I hate Oribos those attendants so much). We know there are an infinite number of afterlives, so clearly somewhere someone is probably resting (later we know more) but all we see is you’re either mind-wiped into joining the blue angel cult, participating in a battle royale, fertilizer for Wild Gods, tortured into repentance, or tossed into hell. Nobody has any comments about this? There’s nothing else to show us?

Helya and Mueh’zala are basically footnotes. Ve’nari is an intriguing story that goes nowhere. I have no idea what the purpose of the Night Warrior storyline was, or the Drust for that matter. The Primus is a strategic genius who is duped, creates domination magic and gets bested by the person he chained with said magic, and then serves as our Dadghar with less personality telling us to go hunt macguffins for reasons. Devourers seem interesting, but they might be for a future expansion so I’ll give them a pass. Brokers are basically just … whatever.

Oh and Halite - spot on at the end about ,“And please, please , be open about problems that have been encountered during the writing and production of the game. Players are going to be a lot more forgiving if you take criticism and speak honestly about the process.”

Alynsa:
100% on the campaigns. So disjointed, so awkward, hopefully never to be repeated.

In terms of BFA - something that I wish Halite had pointed out - it’s entirely true what you wrote. I’ll take it a step more extreme, but I felt completely lied to by BFA. We start with war - but basically from then on in, it’s played out via missions. We’re fighting fake Old Gods, Old God minions, Naga, evil Mechagnomes, and a real Old God.

It’s advertised as a faction conflict - I have issues with many aspects of it, such as burning Teldrassil (at the very least burning it first), plus the portrayal of the Horde at the Undercity being inspiring, but in reality it’s in the aftermath of war crimes. I dislike those choices wildly, but even more so the eventual narrative is (basically) dominated by Old Gods, except it includes us jumping all over the place with our faction relationships really not matching the command table and/or the story.

It’s basically ridiculous that so much of the storyline occurs in external mediums, but I have to say that your description of the new player experience is amazing, hilarious, and terrible all at once. I love it and I never really thought about it but even if so much of the story wasn’t in comics and books, the lack of explaining anything older is non-existent.

Then again I’m also a big proponent of adding scaling for old dungeons and raids so that we could regularly have some of them “in rotation” and engage with them on a real basis (not timewalking basis).

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So while I’m stuck waiting for a meeting that will go on too long and be utterly irrelevant to me or my work (I’m feeling you right now, Zarrin), I want to talk about threat escalation and how it impacts the story.

I’m starting this pre-meeting, but will probably finish it post-meeting.

I’m going to use comic books as my example because WoW’s storytelling shares a lot of similarities to comics. This is especially evident in the escalation of threats, how new threats are treated, and more importantly how old threats are treated as a result. I’m gonna do an awful lot of brief summary here and leave out a lot to get to the point, so just follow me on this journey.

The Green Goblin. Back when he first came around, he was a small threat. But when he learned who Spidey is, his threat level went up a few notches. Then he killed Gwen Stacy (spoiler for a 50 year old story), and became a top tier threat. There was also a whole dying and coming back thing, but we’re skipping that.

So now the Green Goblin is a big deal. Spidey is shaking in his boots when Green Gobs shows up, because it very well could mean someone close to him will die. More importantly, the readers feel that same level of threat and it’s always going to be more about what we the readers (or players) feel is a threat.

Because after a while, the Green Goblin gets beaten by Spidey one too many times and feels like less of a threat. So he gets a power-up. Maybe he’s stronger and faster, with new tech. Maybe he runs an organization like SHIELD and has a more global reach and government backing. Maybe he gets the Carnage symbiote. And these power-ups make him more threatening, until Spider-Man inevitably finds a way to beat him.

In the end, all it serves is to make a non-powered-up Green Goblin feel like a nuacence again. Not a threat.

Because if Peter Parker can punch out a Norman Osborne with all his Goblin powers combined with Carnage powers? What chance does a Norman Osborne with only Goblin powers really have?

We have this in WoW, but in a more general sense. In Vanilla, we beat up a recently awakened old god, not yet at full power, who is a threat just below the titans. Then in Wrath, we beat up another old god, but this one’s been awake! He’s just stuck in his prison, unable to access his full power, but closer to it than C’thun. Then it’s high ranking demons just below Sargeras in power. Then it’s back-to-back titans. And then a fully awake, fully released old god. Now it’s a Titan+++, and unlike the rest, we didn’t need a McGuffin to beat him.

Threats in WoW keep escalating. And it makes old threats feel pathetic.

In Vanilla, the Scarlets were dangerous. You know they’re up to back shenanigans, and if you don’t stop them? Who knows what’ll happen!!

By Wrath, they’re a minor threat. Left unchecked, they might get in the way in the war against the Lich King. They’re still on the threat meter, but very low. Above murlocs, but below a cult of necromancers.

By Cataclysm, they became a joke. Scarlet Monastery dungeon quests were about helping a crazy man lead other crazies.

What once was an interesting and dangerous villain is rendered a joke. A state from which they cannot really recover from, because they haven’t been a real threat since 2004. And what good is a cult of deranged Light worshippers against heroes who have killed literal gods?

WoW has focused so much on making the next enemy bigger and tougher and more dangerous than the ones before it that the game has to reach ridiculous levels just to create new threats.

We have defeated or killed two Eternal Ones, beings allegedly equal to or greater than titans. What chance does anything on Azeroth have against us? How ridiculous is it that we god-slaying behemouths of power will be sent to kill twelve boars next expansion?

The next threat does not have to be bigger and badder than the last one. You don’t need to throw a Carnage symbiote on Argus to make a more powerful Zovaal. The longer you keep doing this, the more challanging the long term storytelling will become.

Instead of fighting newer, bigger, tougher divine beings, we should be focused on fighting their servants or people who stole some measure of power from them. We should be facing more Garrosh-type threats.

Because Garrosh wasn’t a threat because he could end the universe. He wasn’t a threat because he could end all life. He was a threat because he could end our lives and the lives of those we care about. Him and the army under him didn’t want to burn the entire world; they just wanted to burn our world, our cities, the people we were invested in.

This type of storytelling could keep those old threats relevant and not waste them on a joke. Imagine Scarlet Steve, the high inquisitor chaplain admiral of the reborn Scarlet Brotherhood Onslaught Crusade. He’s not only got the old remnants of the Scarlets; he’s also been busy recruiting. With the Scourge rampaging out of control, he makes his sales pitch that the Alliance isn’t capable of handling the threat, and the threat only happened because of the Horde’s leadership. And Scarlet Steve found a golden glowing crystal, a remnant of Xe’ra that he ate that vastly increases his Light given power. And he shares this power with his followers.

Scarlet Steve and his forces might not be capable of burning down the world. But they’re certainly strong enough to oust the Alliance leadership and bring death to the Horde. And if written well, their mission could carry an expansion.

Using threats like this for most expansions will also make it more impactful when we do inevitably face a god-tier threat. Right now, if 10.0 ends in a god battle, that will make it the fourth expansion in a row where we fight a godly being in the end. Argus, N’zoth, Zovaal and this new god. It’s already to the point where the very nature of divine status in WoW is just another really tough (but manageable) threat we face and defeat in its proper order. After a very short while, we’ll need to fight the gods of gods to even feel anything at all.

Stop escalation. Bring it back down before ramping it all back up. Make threats more like rolling hills than an infinity mountain we’re always climbing.

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So Loki is going to bust out a variant of Teldrassil from the TVA to replace our Teldrassil. I am looking forward to it. :innocent:

(And let me say that was a lot of deleting just to get that post down to Variant Teldrassil. I should have just typed it out.)

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I am :> I’m gonna link to this thread in my original thread as well, so more people will be able to read this.

Great reads from both Alynsa and Zarrín in general, I’m glad you like my post and shared your own opinions, so thanks for your feedback!

Some minor things I’d just like to add: I kinda cut some of the covenant story stuff from my draft, I left in a little bit of it about Kel’thuzad only being visible in the Venthyr and Maldraxxus campaigns but I cut the larger part I had to say about it. Also in part because I’m going to write more about covenants in general at some point. And I agree wholly about the stuff about the books, major story beats relevant to the game should be in the game.

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I have been glad to see Blizzard fielding some of the more technical side of things in the back-and-forths (though a lot of it has been the “softball question” stuff). On the other side of things, I am worried that 1.) There hasn’t been a lot of threads relating to story-related problems with the game and 2.) There has been zero interaction with what few threads exist. I wonder if Cdev is even going to be part of the Community Council process at all at this point.